Ireland's abortion referendum – Politics Weekly podcast

Pippa Crerar is joined by Eoin Carolan, Lisa O’Carroll, Sinéad Baker and Jim Waterson to discuss this week’s referendum in Ireland. Plus Vikram Dodd on how Sajid Javid has been received by the police and Mark Lilla on Democrats, the left and identity politics

Ireland goes to the polls this week in a referendum to change its constitution and give women the right to abortions. If the majority vote yes, western Europe’s strictest abortion laws will be open to reform. But with many undecided the result is not easily predictable despite a lead in the polls for yes.

Also this week: the new home secretary, Sajid Javid, had his first taste of an event his predecessors approached with trepidation – the speech to the Police Federation. Vikram Dodd reports on how it went down.

Plus: following the shock election in 2016 of Donald Trump in America one piece of journalism in particular cut through - and it became the New York Times’s most-read political column of the year. Now it has been expanded into a book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. We hear from its author, Mark Lilla.